Slugfest

Twenty-one

As I recalled, that’s what relationships were like—blowups, followed by makeups—though I imagined few were as animated or as expensive as the Anzalones’.

My last relationship ended when I was accused of being married to my job. Ironic, since I was fired soon after. It never occurred to me to call the man and tell him what happened. Some relationships have an expiration date, like milk, and that one had no longer passed the sniff test.

I’d been on my own for a while and, apart from the semiannual fix-up orchestrated by Babe or Lucy, I was content running my business, getting used to life in Springfield, and taking the occasional trip into the city to catch up with old friends. Apart from Hank Mossdale there had only been one other man on my radar—Mike O’Malley, a Springfield cop. But subtle signs were putting him into the confidant/brother camp and not the what-does-he-look-like-naked camp, and I was fine with that. In fact, I’d thought that he and Lucy might have some chemistry, but that flirtation was short-lived. He’d gotten her out of a jam and she was suitably grateful but, according to her—and she’s the kind that tells—it never went any further.

When I got to her place, I picked up the mail and left the poisonous-to-pets info sheet and a brief note under the corner of the doormat of the woman on three. Or four, whatever it was. I would have slipped it under her door but worried she might automatically assume it was a menu and shred it and let her cats pee on it.

Once in the apartment, I hung on the refrigerator door, willing the remnants of the previous night’s chickpea salad to miraculously turn into kung pao chicken or a slab of lasagna, but it didn’t happen. The hurricane drink mix started to seem like a good idea but it went better with jambalaya than it did on an empty stomach.

I tiptoed down the stairs. As I passed the neighbor’s apartment, the peephole cover moved, and I gave the woman behind the door a slight wave I knew she wouldn’t return. The pet poison list was still outside. When I reached the ground floor, I held the inside door open with my stockinged foot. As the cat lady had predicted, any number of menus from local restaurants littered the floor. I had my choice of Chinese, Japanese, Italian, the intriguingly named Fusha Fusion, or a Greek diner, from which I could presumably get anything I wanted. This was New York at its best—anything you wanted brought to your door, 24-7. Food was the least of it.

The diner menus were just beyond my reach, stacked neatly by the outer door. Why did those guys have to be the neat ones? Everyone else had just flung theirs in the doorway and disappeared.

I stretched as far as I could and grazed the menus with my fingertips, but only succeeded in pushing them farther away. Then I got the bright idea to wedge the other menus between the door and the jamb, near the lock so the bolt wouldn’t engage. Don’t try this at home. The menus fell, the door locked. I was trapped in the drafty vestibule with no shoes, no jacket, no phone, and, more important, no keys. I stood there shivering, trying to decide what to do next.

One solution was to suck it up and walk to the bar on the corner and beg them to let me use their phone to call a locksmith. My free stay at Lucy’s was going to cost me at least two hundred bucks unless prices had gone up since I’d moved to Connecticut. And she wouldn’t be able to get into her own apartment when she returned. Not a good plan.